Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Functional advantages and benefits of LEDs include high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, lower operating costs, and many others. Recent advances in LED technology have provided efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects in many applications. Some of the fixtures embodying these sources feature a lighting module, including one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, for example, as discussed in detail in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Manufacturers currently offer a large number of different lighting units for implementation in lighting fixtures. Each lighting unit often has a different form factor and/or creates a different type of lighting effect. For example, thousands of different LED-based lighting units may be offered, with each including a unique form factor and/or the capability of producing a unique lighting effect. Each of the LED-based lighting units may optionally be optimized for a specific lighting fixture and/or specific intended application. However, some customers may have difficulty in choosing an appropriate lighting unit from the variety of different lighting units that are offered.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a lighting unit that may adaptably achieve a plurality of lighting effects and that may optionally overcome one or more drawbacks of conventional approaches.